After a psychic told her things she couldn't have possibly guessed about her late friend, Kathleen Hale became a willing disciple of the spiritual—even if it meant checking her cynicism at the door.

I went to the psychic as a gag. After tequila shots, our bachelorette party found Madame Stein Five Dollar Palm between two eyebrow-threading parlors. The four-by-six room meant we'd go one at a time. I shivered on the Manhattan sidewalk with the other girls, watching through the window as the bride received news so shocking that her jaw dropped. She still won't tell us what Stein said.

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When it was my turn, I staggered over the threshold reeking of El Jimador. Stein told me to sit on a cardboard box full of crystals. "Are you moving?" I asked, indicating the box. An amethyst was digging into my ass. "Are you moving?" she responded, shuffling some tarot cards. I sort of zoned out after that—that is, until she guessed the name of my dead friend, Erik. Then she told me three things about him that were real, and then she described him in such a way that it was like he was in the room with us. Outside, my friends screamed for me to hurry up; it was cold, and they wanted to go to Sugarland. I ignored them, "Tell me more about Erik," I said.

She shook her head. "Fifty dollars."

I rummaged through my purse, glancing out the window. My friends were already gone, like they'd vanished out of thin air. "Do you take credit cards?" I asked. Stein's expression darkened, and without answering, she stood up from the table, and disappeared through a beaded curtain. I waited for fifteen minutes, sitting on my amethyst, and then I turned to go.

***

Months later I was still thinking about Erik. Madame Stein had stirred the silt of old grief, and I missed him all over again—a lot. "I had a dream about him last night," I groggily told my best friend McKetta one morning while idly prowling the Internet, searching for things like "How do psychics know?"

"Is this because of Princess Stein?" McKetta asked, sounding vaguely jealous (she hadn't been invited to the bachelorette party). "Madame Stein," I mumbled, lost in my computer screen. Somehow, I'd found myself on the landing page for Montclair Metaphysical, a healing center that offers classes for would-be psychics. It felt like a sign: Why not cut out the middleman and contact Erik myself?

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Arthur Elgort; styled by Joe Zee

The Montclair Psychic School is located upstairs from a State Farm Office, and next door to a kitchen ventilation system company. I arrived on a cloudless Sunday with McKetta in tow. Upon learning I'd impulsively signed up for the expedited psychic class in New Jersey, she had said, "Oh honey, I'll go with you—who knows maybe I'll get somebody's number." (McKetta is currently in dating mode.)

"I wonder what sex with a psychic is like?" she mused as we made our way inside. "Lots of feelings and ghosts, probably," I said. In the séance room, a giant gong stood in one corner, next to an even larger puppet stage, and despite the lack of windows, fans, or even air vents, a bunch of wind chimes dangled noiselessly from the ceiling. I noticed that one of the doors had been sealed with multiple layers of thick, black electrical tape. I wondered if that was where the ghosts lived.

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But before I had time to get too freaked out by the fact that we were going to be sequestered in an airless room for the next four hours, our instructor loped into the room. She was tall, with sloped posture, dense, grey, wiry hair, and thick wrists that hung almost to her knees. Between her disproportionately long arms and her wide-set, down-slanting eyes, she resembled a giant sloth. "I'm Lee Van Zyl," she said. "Your teacher."

She harrumphed into a folding chair, smiling in a vaguely tired way. Behind her, watercolors of mountains and sunsets hung alongside anatomical posters. "I never thought I'd be a psychic," she said, clearly beginning a well-practiced speech. "When dead people first started talking to me, I thought I was schizophrenic. Once I figured it out, I still didn't want to be a psychic. I thought, I'll just talk to dead people, I like them."

I ignored McKetta's look of alarm. This seemed promising, actually. "Personally I work with God," Lee added abruptly. "Who you work with is your business." McKetta pinched my leg. "Let's go," she hissed. I swatted her hand away.

"I'm guessing that you need some basics," Lee said, pointing to her vagina. "This is the root chakra." Flattening her hand, she began to orbit her vagina with her fingers. "Chakras have been proven by science. Let's open up the Kundalini energy." She closed her eyes, still circling her crotch with her hand, and took a few deep breaths. The sequins dappling the breast of her snakeskin print blouse shimmered furiously under the fluorescent lights.

Lee's eyes popped open. She explained that she wanted us to take turns coming up with symbols for various things. "This way you'll know what you're spirit guides are telling you," she said. "When you shut your eyes with a client, you'll see images. Those images are meaningful."

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Arthur Elgort; styled by Joe Zee

Next on the agenda: how to perfect the mystical affect. "Your psychic gaze is very important if you want to be convincing," Lee said. "Try to look at clients like you're staring at one of those magic eye posters." I thought of Madame Stein's distracted gaze as she asked whether I was moving. At the time, I'd simply assumed that, like me, she was drunk. "A little off center," Lee continued, "a little dazed, but contemplative. Sometimes it helps to have an actual crystal ball."

She clapped her hands. "Now it's time for small groups." She indicated partners by wigwagging at us with seemingly boneless fingers. I would be paired with a French man name-tagged Etienne.

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"Hi," I said. I wanted to go home.

"Hi," he said. "I drove 15 hours to be here."

Lee ambled over and asked how it felt so far. I smiled nervously and asked if she could please look at the photograph I'd brought— I wanted to know how to communicate with a ghost, I explained. "I'm not on the clock, honey," she said, sounding annoyed as she backed away. "Book an appointment if you want to talk to me."

I glanced sheepishly at Etienne, embarrassed that he'd witnessed the snub, but he hadn't noticed. "Tell me when I will find love," he demanded. "Okay…Do you have anything I could hold?" I mumbled, hoping that a prop might work in lieu of the traditional crystal ball.

Etienne wrestled keys from his pocket. I cupped them in my hands and shut my eyes. "I saw the sun behind some mountains," I managed weakly. My "vision" could very well have been the result of four hours spent staring at watercolors of sunlit mountains. But I wasn't lying, necessarily. "You'll have obstacles," I continued, "but there will be prosperity." He frowned.

Right. I reached into my backpack and carefully retrieved the photo I'd brought of Erik—the only one I have of us together, from ninth grade homecoming. We went as friends, which is what we were. Etienne was reverential with the photo. He held it flat in his hands, careful not to make fingerprints.

"What do you do?" he asked.

"I'm a writer," I said.

"No, I mean, how do you do this?" he asked, looking confused. "How do I give a psychic reading?"

Arthur Elgort; styled by Joe Zee

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I blinked at him, knowing that if I reminded him that we were both actually pretending to be psychics for our own personal reasons, Etienne's blind, and painfully rosy, faith in my predictions would be broken. That seemed like a dick thing to do.

"Do you think…" I started slowly, "that the boy in this photo is...my guardian angel?"

"Yes," Etienne gushed. "You're going to marry him!"

***

That night, after McKetta dropped me off, I took the subway north with my psychic diploma in my lap. I had had a vague memory of certain cross streets, and the way the eyebrow threading posters had appeared like church banners on either side of Stein's door. But Lieutenant Jimador had made my memory of the bachelorette party hazy, and I hadn't been able to find any psychics named Madame Stein on Google. Not even the maid of honor remembered where we'd gone.

After wandering for what felt like hours, and taking the subway two more stops, just in case, I still couldn't find Stein's storefront anywhere. Exhausted, I finally collapsed onto a rickety, metal folding chair outside of a closet-size speakeasy.

"You can't just sit here," a waiter said. So I ordered a martini and rubbed my eyes. I remembered Erik's face from the Homecoming photo—how handsome and vibrant he had looked before the heroin took over—and I mentally wrapped these images around a single question: "Are you there?" I held my breath, waiting for any indication that Erik could hear me. The psychic diploma lay crumpled in my purse.

"You all right?" the waiter, who had been waiting with my martini and the check, demanded impatiently. I opened my eyes and just stared at him. "Sign," he said, pointing to the merchant copy.

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